Einsiedeln

Miniature sheet Stamp Day 2007

Virtually no other Swiss town with a population of about 13,000 is so well known in other countries as Einsiedeln in Canton Schwyz, whose main claims to fame are its Benedictine abbey and more than a thousand years of cultural history. To commemorate Stamp Day 2007, Einsiedeln features on a new miniature postage stamp sheet.

Einsiedeln

Einsiedeln is the most frequently visited place of pilgrimage in Switzerland. Every year, more than a hundred thousand pilgrims and visitors make their way to the Abbey, Switzerland's most significant Baroque building, with its "Chapel of Grace" and the famous Black Madonna. Einsiedeln is closely bound up with the life of Saint Meinrad. In 835, Saint Meinrad is said to have built a hermitage and chapel on the site in the Abbey where the Chapel of Grace now stands in order to serve God, thus giving Einsiedeln its name (in English, "Einsiedler" means "hermit"). The legend goes that Meinrad was murdered in 861 by two robbers, whereupon they were pursued by two ravens and brought to justice – hence the two ravens in Einsiedeln's coat of arms.

Benedictine abbey

The Benedictine abbey was founded in 934, and the present Baroque monastery was built between 1674 and 1735 in three stages, to the plans of Brother Caspar Moosbrugger. The Asam brothers created the frescoes and stuccowork inside the Abbey, and the Benedictine Abbey contains Switzerland's largest ceiling fresco.
Einsiedeln lies on St. James' Way and used to be an important gathering point for pilgrims travelling to Santiago de Compostela and the grave of the Apostle James. Today, the pilgrimage on foot along this Way is experiencing a remarkable renaissance. The route leads from Lake Constance and the Zurich Oberland via the Etzel Pass, where St. Meinrad's Chapel stands. This is where Meinrad is said to have first settled before building his hermitage. From the 14th century onwards, pilgrims journeyed to Einsiedeln to honor the Virgin Mary, even coming from as far afield as northern Germany and the Low Countries during the late Middle Ages.
Pilgrim numbers dropped off, and the monastery reached a low point in its history at the time of the Reformation. From 1516 to 1518, Huldrych Zwingli was employed as the monastery's stipendiary priest. The last monk left the monastery in 1525, and the Abbot had to resign one year later, sounding the death-knell for Einsiedeln as a monastery. The people of Schwyz then appointed a new Abbot but Rome did not recognize his legitimacy until 1533. This Abbot revived the monastery by taking in the first lay persons, and from the second half of the 16th century, the monastery complex once again became the religious focal point for Swiss Catholics.

Great World Theatre tradition

Besides the monastery's extensive cultural interest, Einsiedeln is also home to a library, built by Ticino architect Mario Botta, dedicated solely to architecture, and to a panoramic circular painting representing the Crucifixion. The town also has a unique theatrical tradition. Until 1992, the Abbey square and its impressive facade provided the setting for performances of Calderon's Great World Theatre, but in recent years, the play featured has been Thomas Hürlimann's "Einsiedler Welttheater" (Einsiedeln World Theatre). Last summer, this drama event with some 500 participants attracted tens of thousands of spectators to Einsiedeln, helping to spread the fame of the monastery complex far and wide once more.

Postage stamp in detail

Issue: Switzerland, 13 November 2007
Design: Christian Kitzmüller, Regensdorf (ZH)
Print: 5-color offset by Joh. Enschede, Haarlem, Netherlands
Perforation: 13.25:13.75
Stamp size: 32.5 x 40 mm
Sheet size: 105 x 70 mm

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